“I’ve got it. It’s gone.” I wiped the blood from my hand onto the black jeans.

“Pay attention.” That was said with an edge, an edge that had every right to be there.

“I know. Sorry.” Sorry didn’t quite get it for not treating opening a gate with the cautious respect it deserved. It was wild and feral. I wasn’t going to tame it, and if I weren’t careful, it would eat me alive. The best I could hope to do was control it and keep it on a short leash. And watch it—always watch it. Keep a wall up. I wasn’t what those bitches said I was. I was human, at least enough to stop the part of me that wasn’t.

The gate was still open, the cold light spilling through the ragged gash. I sucked in a deep breath. I had it now; it didn’t have me. “Let’s get them through.”

To the side I saw Cherish watching me with the clouded black eyes of a vampire ready for battle. “You are Auphe. I thought you were lying.”

“Why the hell would I lie about something like that?” I bit off as Niko and Robin helped me heave the first dead weight through the light. “How’d you know?” I went on quietly for Nik’s ears only. But as usual, Robin couldn’t let anything be for someone else only, not if that someone wasn’t him.

“You were speaking Auphe.” The fox face pulled into an expression of distaste.

Those two years they’d had me—I must’ve learned the language then. I’d seen that when I understood the Auphe before—telling me I was the last male. But understanding it and speaking it, those were two different things. . . . And they were just two more things tying me to them.

“What’d I say?” I didn’t remember, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. If it had been anything like what was going through my mind . . . Jesus.

“I have no idea. I don’t understand Auphe, and I don’t want to. Imagine ground glass shoved into your ear canal. That’s what it sounds like, and it’s about that pleasurable to hear,” he grunted as we tossed the next cat through. “But your brother knew before you started with that. He was already moving.”

“Nik?” The last ccoa slid into the gray. I closed the rip and ignored the disappointment of letting it go. Control. I had it. I did.

“You opened that thing and you weren’t you. Before you touched the blood. Before you spoke that hell-spawn language. I knew the second you opened the gate and weren’t paying attention.”

It was something Niko didn’t allow himself often—anger—and it was completely justifiable. I hadn’t paid attention and I’d nearly gotten lost. I’d gone from swearing not to open any more gates, to doing it to try to outthink the Auphe, to emergencies in case of attacks, and finally to just cleaning up around the house.

Which is how the road to hell is paved with a little maid service.

“It won’t happen again,” I said grimly.

“See that it doesn’t. I won’t enjoy knocking you out, but I will.” I took it for what it was: reassurance. Niko was my lifeline. If I started to fall, he’d drag me back.

“No one I’d rather have beat my ass into unconsciousness,” I said wryly.

“Not that this macho brotherly love fest isn’t bringing a tear to the eye,” Robin drawled, “but I think we need to talk about moving. Oshossi knows where we are now. If we don’t go, every night is going to be Sundown Social at the Zoo. Pet the predator. Kiss the carnivore. All things I could do without.”

It was a good point. Niko, Robin, and Promise discussed it; Cherish watched my every move with wary eyes; and I, ignoring her as I ignored most of the others who gave me that look, ended up playing Go Fish with Xolo. Which, in a strange way, was what I needed. I didn’t want to think about Oshossi and his overgrown kitties. I didn’t want to think about the Auphe. I didn’t want to think about me.

The chupa had crept out of the back bedroom while the others talked, silently watched them with those large eyes for a while, and then moved over to me. I was on the couch, arms folded and doing my damnedest to keep my mind a blank. No matter what Niko would’ve said with dry sarcasm, it wasn’t that easy. Xolo sat on the floor opposite me and placed a pack of cards on the artistic metal curve of table between us. The shaved dog face regarded me gravely. I scowled back. It was habit. I didn’t have anything against Cherish’s pet. He tended to stay out of the way, gave up the remote when I wanted it, and didn’t eat my leftover pizza in the fridge. As roommates went, he wasn’t so bad. Weird, but not as bad as Robin, who’d gotten so desperate it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him humping a table leg.

“What?” I asked. “What do you want?”

Just as gravely, he dealt the cards. Seven to me, seven to him. Hell, why not? I played Go Fish with him. He held up his fingers when he asked for my cards. Any threes? Up would go three fingers. It didn’t work so great for jacks, queens, and kings, so we discarded them. Those eyes would blink, moonlike, the fingers would flash, and the cards would go down. The bastard couldn’t talk, couldn’t fight, could barely dress himself, and he beat me seven games to three.

I turned the cards around to look at the backs. “Are these marked? Are you cheating?” Or was I less bright than a mentally challenged chimp?

“I hate to interrupt your vastly important task”—Niko’s hand pulled the cards from mine and slapped them on the table—“but we’ve narrowed our options.”

“Yeah? Rafferty’s place?” Rafferty was a healer we’d used before. He’d disappeared months ago, but as it was most likely a voluntary disappearance, there wasn’t much we could do about it. He wouldn’t want us sticking our noses in his business, and he had a lot of business to take care of. His cousin was sick, a kind of sick Rafferty couldn’t heal. We’d checked his house after a month of not being able to contact him. . . . We had business too, and it frequently called for a healer afterward. From the looks of the overgrown yard, the house had been locked up and temporarily abandoned. Both Rafferty and his cousin were gone. Rafferty wasn’t one to give up. If he couldn’t cure his cousin, he’d find someone who could.

“Figured,” I added.

“Or Ishiah’s,” Nik said. “From what you’ve said, he can handle himself well.”

“Ishiah’s?” I leaned back against the couch. “You’re shitting me, right? One day, and he’d kill us before Oshossi or the Auphe could.”

Robin immediately backed me up—so immediately, in fact, that I wondered who he was actually trying to keep safe—us or Ishiah. “All of us shoehorned into that overgrown canary’s place? That’s an exercise in natural selection waiting to happen. Survival of the fittest. And that walking feather duster is fit.” His left eye twitched. “Very fit.” This had to be the longest Robin hadn’t gotten laid in, damn, at least in the span of human existence—at least once we’d stopped braiding each other’s back hair and thinking of lice as a tasty treat. “Desperate” didn’t begin to cover the shape he was in.

I was so locking my door tonight.

Rafferty’s place. On the one hand, Rafferty did have the nature preserve behind his house, a good location for supernatural wildlife that wanted to eat you. On the other, it might take Oshossi a while to find us there. I said so, and Niko agreed. As for the Auphe, of course they had to be watching us, but following us on the open road in daylight? Doubtful. We’d lost them time and time again when we’d lived on the run. They always eventually found us, but that we lost them to begin with proved they weren’t infallible.

“Once we get the report from Mickey, we will definitely have to be more proactive about tracking down Oshossi. Robin and Mickey are doing what they can, but we need to get this resolved more quickly,” Niko said. Now that we’d committed ourselves, which I still didn’t think was the best idea, he was right. But helping Cherish fight off a few cadejos and snakes was different than actively going after the one who sicced them on her. He was probably going to be a little harder to take care of than the wildlife.